Marijuana - The First Twelve Thousand Years

I. The Early Years

1. Cannabis in the Ancient World

Millions of years ago, humanoid creatures descended from the trees in Africa. These
first men stood erect, their eyes peering into the beyond, their hands grasping
rudimentary weapons and tools, ready to bend nature to their will.

The descendants of these first men wandered into almost every corner of the earth and
evolved into four main racial groups: the Negroids, Australoids, Mongoloids, and
Caucasoids. Each race, living under different climatic conditions and in virtual isolation
from one another, developed special physical characteristics to enable them to survive in
their particular part of the world. Along with these physical traits there emerged
rudimentary cultures as distinct as the colors of their skins. Some communities relied
primarily on hunting for survival, refining their skills and weapons through the ages to
capture prey and eventually to conquer and enslave rival communities. Others subsequently
discovered that the seeds and leaves of certain plants would appease hunger and sustain
life. Once they became farmers, men gave up their spears and knives for plowshares and
permanent settlements came into being.

The earliest civilizations sprouted along the banks of great rivers - the Hwang-Ho in
China, the Indus in India, the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia (where biblical
scholars have sought in vain for traces of the Garden of Eden), and the Nile in Egypt. The
soil along these riverbanks was particularly suited for agriculture, being rich and deep
and invigorated annually by new deposits of silt.

Whether they remained hunters or became farmers, the people who lived long before the
written word was invented, discovered through trial and error the best materials for
shaping, molding, bending, twisting, and sharpening objects into tools. In each
civilization these discoveries were much the same; the only differences were the materials
at hand.

On the basis of artefacts and the history of China in its later years, archaeologists
now assure us that hemp has been a familiar agricultural crop in China from the remote
beginnings of settlement in that part of the world down to our own time. When the Chinese
went about testing materials in their environment for suitability as tools, they most
certainly would have looked into the possibility of using hemp whenever they required some
kind of fiber.

Cannabis in China

The earliest record of man's use of cannabis comes from the island of Taiwan located
off the coast of mainland China. In this densely populated part of the world,
archaeologists have unearthed an ancient village site dating back over 10,000 years to the
Stone Age.

Scattered among the trash and debris from this prehistoric community were some broken
pieces of pottery the sides of which had been decorated by pressing strips of cord into
the wet clay before it hardened. Also dispersed among the pottery fragments were some
elongated rod-shaped tools, very similar in appearance to those later used to loosen
cannabis fibers from their stems.[1] These simple pots, with their patterns of twisted
fiber embedded in their sides, suggest that men have been using the marijuana plant in
some manner since the dawn of history.

The discovery that twisted strands of fiber were much stronger than individual strands
was followed by developments in the arts of spinning and weaving fibers into fabric -
innovations that ended man's reliance on animal skins for clothing. Here, too, it was hemp
fiber that the Chinese chose for their first homespun garments. So important a place did
hemp fiber occupy in ancient Chinese culture that the Book of Rites (second century
B.C.) ordained that out of respect for the dead, mourners should wear clothes made from
hemp fabric, a custom followed down to modern times.[2]

While traces of early Chinese fabrics have all but disappeared, in 1972 an ancient
burial site dating back to the Chou dynasty (1122-249 B.C.) was discovered. In it were
fragments of cloth, some bronze containers, weapons, and pieces of jade. Inspection of the
cloth showed it to be made of hemp, making this the oldest preserved specimen of hemp in
existence.[3]

The ancient Chinese not only wove their clothes from hemp, they also used the sturdy
fiber to manufacture shoes. In fact, hemp was so highly regarded by the Chinese that they
called their country the "land of mulberry and hemp".

The mulberry plant was venerated because it was the food upon which silkworms fed, and
silk was one of China's most important products. But silk was very expensive and only the
very wealthy could afford silken fabric. For the vast millions of less fortunate, cheaper
material had to be found. Such material was typically hemp.

Ancient Chinese manuscripts are filled with passages urging the people to plant hemp so
that they will have clothes.[4] A book of ancient poetry mentions the spinning of hempen
threads by a young girl.[5] The Shu King, a book which dates back to about 2350
B.C., says that in the province of Shantung the soil was "whitish and rich...with
silk, hemp, lead, pine trees and strange stones..." and that hemp was among the
articles of tribute extorted from inhabitants of the valley of the Honan.[6]

During the ninth century B.C., "female man-barbarians," an Amazon-like
dynasty of female warriors from Indochina, offered the Chinese emperor a "luminous
sunset-clouds brocade" fashioned from hemp, as tribute. According to the court
transcriber, it was "shining and radiant, infecting men with its sweet smelling
aroma. With this, and the intermingling of the five colors in it, it was more ravishingly
beautiful than the brocades of our central states."[7]

Ma, the Chinese word for hemp, is composed of two symbols which are meant to
depict hemp. The part beneath and to the right of the straight lines represent hemp fibers
dangling from a rack. The horizontal and vertical lines represent the home in which they
were drying.

As they became more familiar with the plant, the Chinese discovered it was dioecious.
Male plants were then clearly distinguished from females by name (hsi for the male,
chu for the female). The Chinese also recognised that the male plants produced a
better fiber than the female, whereas the female produced the better seeds.[8] (Although
hemp seed was a major grain crop in ancient China until the sixth century A.D.,[9] it was
not as important a food grain as rice or mullet.[10])

Hemp fiber was also once a factor in the wars waged by Chinese land barons. Initially,
Chinese archers fashioned their bowstrings from bamboo fibers. When hemp's greater
strength and durability were discovered, bamboo strings were replaced with those made from
hemp. Equipped with these superior bowstrings, archers could send their arrows further and
with greater force. Enemy archers, whose weapons were made from inferior bamboo, were at a
considerable disadvantage. With ineffectual archers, armies were vulnerable to attack at
distances from which they could not effectively return the hail of deadly missiles that
rained upon them. So important was the hemp bowstring that Chinese monarchs of old set
aside large portions of land exclusively for hemp, the first agricultural war crop.[11]

In fact, every canton in ancient China grew hemp. Typically, each canton tried to be
self-sufficient and grow everything it needed to support its own needs. When it couldn't
raise something itself, it grew crops or manufactured materials that it could trade for
essential goods. Accordingly, crops were planted around homes not only because of the
suitability of the land, but also because of their commercial value. The closer to the
home, the greater a crop's value.

Because food was essential, millet and rice were grown wherever land and water were
available. Next came vegetable gardens and orchards, and beyond them the textile plants,
chiefly hemp.[12] Next came the cereals and vegetables.

After the hemp was harvested by the men, the women, who were the weavers, manufactured
clothes from the fibers for the family. After the family's needs were satisfied, other
garments were produced for sale. To support their families, weaving began in autumn and
lasted all winter.[13]

The Invention of Paper

Among the many important inventions credited to the Chinese, paper must surely rank at
the very top. Without paper, the progress of civilization would have advanced at a snail's
pace. Mass production of newspapers, magazines, books, notepaper, etc, would all be
impossible. Business and industry would come to a standstill without paper to record
transactions, keep track of inventories, and make payments of large sums of money. Nearly
every activity we now take for granted would be a monumental undertaking were it not for
paper.

According to Chinese legend, the paper-making process was invented by a minor court
official, Ts'ai Lun, in A.D. 105. Prior to that time, the Chinese carved their writings
onto bamboo slips and wooden tablets. Before the invention of paper, Chinese scholars had
to be physically fit if they wished to devote their lives to learning. When philosopher Me
Ti moved around the country, for example, he took a minimum of three cartloads of books
with him. Emperor Ts'in Shih Huagn, a particularly conscientious ruler, waded through 120
pounds of state documents a day in looking after his administrative duties![14] Without
some less weighty writing medium, Chinese scholars and statesmen could look forward to at
least one hernia if they were any good at their jobs.

As a first alternative to these cumbersome tablets, the Chinese painted their words on
silk fabric with brushes. But silk was very expensive. A thousand silkworms working day in
and day out were needed to produce the silk for a simple "thank you" note.

Ts'ai Lun had a better idea. Why not make a table out of fiber? But how? Producing
writing tablets the way clothes were manufactured, by patiently intermingling individual
fibers was not practical. There had to be some other way to get the fibers to mix with one
another in a lattice structure that would be sturdy enough not to fall apart.

No one knows how Ts'ai Lun finally discovered the secret of manufacturing paper from
fiber. Perhaps it was a case of trial and error. However, the method he finally devised
involved crushing hemp fibers and mulberry tree bark into a pulp and placing the mixture
in a tank of water. Eventually, the fibers rose to the top all tangled together. Portions
of this flotsam were then removed and placed in a mold. When dried in such molds, the
fibers formed into sheets which could then be written on.

When Ts'ai Lun first presented his invention to China's arm-weary bureaucrats, he
thought they would react to it with great enthusiasm. Instead, he was jeered out of court.
Since no one at court was willing to recognize the importance of paper, Ts'ai Lun decided
that the only way to convince people of its value was through trickery. He would use
paper, he told all who would listen, to bring back the dead!

With the help of some friends, Ts'ai Lun feigned death and had himself buried alive in
a coffin. Unknown to most of those who witnessed the internment, the coffin contained a
small hole; through it, a hollow bamboo shoot had been inserted, to provide the trickster
an air supply.

While his family and friends mourned his death, Ts'ai Lun patiently rested in his
coffin below the earth. Then, some time later, his conspirators announced that if some of
the paper invented by the dead man were burned, he would rise from the dead and once again
take his place among the living. Although highly sceptical, the mourners wished to give
the departed every chance, so they set a sizable quantity of paper ablaze. When the
conspirators felt that they had generated enough suspense, they exhumed the coffin and
ripped of the cover. To the shock and amazement of all present, Ts'ai Lun sat up and
thanked them for their devotion to him and their faith in his invention.

The resurrection was regarded as a miracle, the power of which was attributed to the
magic of paper. So great an impression did the Houdini-like escape create that shortly
thereafter the Chinese adopted the custom, which they still follow to this day, of burning
paper over graves of the dead.

Ts'ai Lun himself became an overnight celebrity. His invention was accorded the
recognition it deserved and the inventor was appointed to an important position at court.
But his fame was his undoing. As the new darling at court, rival factions sought to win
him over to their side in the never-ending squabbles of life among the rich and powerful.
Without meaning to, Ts'ai Lun became embroiled in a power battle between the empress and
the emperor's grandmother. Court intrigue was simply too much for the inventor, and when
he was subsequently summoned to give an account of himself, instead of appearing before
his inquisitors, his biography states that he went home, took a bath, combed his hair, put
on his best robes, and drank poison.[15]

Although entertaining, the story of Ts'ai Lun's invention is apocryphal. The discovery
of fragments of paper containing hemp fiber in a grave in China dating back to the first
century B.C., puts the invention long before the time of Ts'ai Lun. Why Ts'ai Lun was
given credit for the invention, however, is still a mystery.

The Chinese kept the secret of paper hidden for many centuries, but eventually it
became known to the Japanese. In a small book entitled A Handy Guide to Papermaking,
dating back to the fifth century A.D., the author states that "hemp and mulberry...
have long been used in worshipping the gods. The business of paper making therefore, is no
ignoble calling."[16]

It was not until the ninth century A.D. that the Arabs, and through them the rest of
the world, learned how to manufacture paper. The events that led to the disclosure of the
paper-making process are somewhat uncertain, but apparently the secret was pried from some
Chinese prisoners captured by the Arabs during the Battle of Samarkand (in present-day
Russia).

Once the Arabs learned the secret, they began producing their own paper. By the twelfth
century A.D., paper mills were operating in the Moorish cities of Valencia, Toledo, and
Xativa, in Spain. After the ousting of the Arabs from Spain, the art became known to the
rest of Europe, and it was not long before paper mills were flourishing not only in Spain,
but in France, Italy, Germany, and England, all of them using the ancient Chinese system
"invented" by Ts'ai Lun.

Magical Marijuana

During the course of its long history in China, hemp found its way into almost every
nook and cranny of Chinese life. It clothed the Chinese from their heads to their feet, it
gave them material to write on, and it became a symbol of power over evil.

Like the practice of medicine around the world, early Chinese doctoring was based on
the concept of demons. If a person were ill, it was because some demon had invaded his
body. The only way to cure him was to drive the demon out. The early priest-doctors
resorted to all kinds of tricks, some of which were rather sophisticated, like drug
therapy, which we will examine shortly. Other methods involved outright magic. By means of
charms, amulets, spells, incantations, exhortations, sacrifices, etc., the priest-doctor
did his utmost to find some way of getting the upper hand over the malevolent demon
believed responsible for an illness.

Among the weapons to come out of the magical kit bag of the ancient Chinese conjurers
were cannabis stalks into which snake-like figures were carved. Armed with these war
hammers, they went to do battle with the unseen enemy on his home ground - the sickbed.
Standing over the body of the stricken patient, his cannabis stalk poised to strike, the
priest pounded the bed and commanded the demon to be gone. If the illness were
psychosomatic and the patient had faith in the conjurer, he occasionally recovered. If his
problem were organic, he rarely improved.

Whatever the outcome, the rite itself is intriguing. Although there is no way of
knowing for sure how it came about, the Chinese tell a story about one of their emperors
named Liu Chi-nu that may explain the connection between cannabis, snakes, and illness.
One day Liu was out in the fields cutting down some hemp, when he saw a snake. Taking no
chances that it might bite him, he shot the serpent with an arrow. The next day he
returned to the place and heard the sound of a mortar and pestle. Tracking down the noise,
he found two boys grinding marijuana leaves. When he asked them what they were doing, the
boys told him they were preparing a medicine to give to their master who had been wounded
by an arrow shot by Liu Chi-nu. Liu Chi-nu then asked what the boys would do to Liu Chi-nu
if they ever found him. Suprisingly, the boys answered that they could not take revenge on
him because Liu Chi-nu was destined to become emperor of China. Liu berated the boys for
their foolishness and they ran away, leaving behind the medicine. Some time later Liu
himself was injured and he applied the crushed marijuana leaves to his wound. The medicine
healed him and Liu subsequently announced his discovery to the people of China and they
began using it for their injuries.

Another story tells of a farmer who saw a snake carrying some marijuana leaves to place
on the wound of another snake. The next day the wounded snake was healed. Intrigued, the
farmer tested the plant on his own wound and was cured.[17]

Whether these stories had anything to do with the idea that marijuana had magical power
or not, the fact is that despite the progress of Chinese medicine far beyond the age of
superstition, the practice of striking beds with stalks made from marijuana stems
continued to be followed until the Middle Ages.[18]

Medicinal Marijuana

Although the Chinese continued to rely on magic in the fight against disease, they also
gradually developed an appreciation and knowledge of the curative powers of medicines. The
person who is generally credited with teaching the Chinese about medicines and their
actions is a legendary emperor, Shen-Nung, who lived around the twenty-eighth century B.C.

Concerned that his priests were suffering from illness despite the magical rites of the
priests, Shen-Nung determined to find an alternate means of relieving the sick. Since he
was also an expert farmer and had a thorough familiarity with plants, he decided to
explore the curative powers of China's plant life first. In this search for compounds that
might help his people, Shen-Nung used himself as a guinea-pig. The emperor could not have
chosen a better subject since he was said to possess the remarkable ability of being able
to see through his abdominal wall into his stomach! Such transparency enabled him to
observe at firsthand the workings of a particular drug on that part of the body.

According to the stories told about him, Shen-Nung ingested as many as seventy
different poisons in a single day and discovered the antidotes for each of them. After he
finished these experiments, he wrote the Pen Ts'ao, a kind of herbal or Materia
Medica as it later became known, which listed hundreds of drugs derived from
vegetable, animal, and mineral sources.

Although there may originally have been an ancient Pen Ts'ao attributed to the
emperor, no original text exists. The oldest Pen Ts'ao dates back to the first
century A.D. and was compiled by an unknown author who claimed he had incorporated the
original herbal into his own compendium. Regardless of whether such an earlier compendium
did or did not exist, the important fact about this first-century herbal is that it
contains a reference to ma, the Chinese word for cannabis.

Ma was a very popular drug, the text notes, since it possessed both yin
and yang. The concepts of yin and yang that pervade early Chinese
medicine are attributed to another legendary emperor, Fu Hsi (ca, 2900 B.C.) whom the
Chinese credit with bringing civilization to the "land of mulberry and hemp".
Before Fu Hsi, so the legends say, the Chinese lived like animals. They had no laws, no
customs, and no traditions. There was no family life. Men and women came together
instinctively, like salmon seeking their breeding ground; they mated, and then went off on
their separate ways.

The first thing Fu Hsi did to produce order out of chaos was to establish matrimony on
a permanent basis. The second thing was to separate all living things into the male and
female principle - the male incorporating all that was positive, the female embodying all
that was negative. From this dualistic principle arose the concept of two opposing forces,
the yin and the yang.

Yin symbolized the weal, passive, and negative feminine influence in nature,
whereas yang represented the strong, active, and positive masculine force. When
these forces were in balance, the body was healthy. When one force dominated the other,
the body was in an unhealthy condition. Marijuana was thus a very difficult drug to
contend with because it contained both the feminine yin and the masculine yang.

Shen-Nung's solution to the problem was to advise that yin, the female plant, be
the only sex cultivated in China since it produced much more of the medicinal principle
than yang, the male plant. Marijuana containing yin was then to be given in
cases involving a loss of yin from the body such as occurred in female weakness
(menstrual fatigue), gout, rheumatism, malaria, beri-beri, constipation, and
absentmindedness.

The Pen Ts'au eventually became the standard manual on drugs in China, and so
highly regarded was its author that Shen-Nung was accorded the singular honour of
deification and the title of Father of Chinese Medicine. Not too long ago China's drug
guilds still paid homage to the memory of Shen-Nung. On the first and fifteenth of each
month, many drugstores offered a 10 percent discount on medicines in honor of the
legendary patron of the healing arts.

Painless Surgery

As physicians became more and more familiar with the properties of drugs, ma
continued to increase in importance as a therapeutic agent. In the second century A.D., a
new use was found for the drug. This discovery was credited to the famous Chinese surgeon
Hua T'o, who is said to have performed extremely complicated surgical procedures without
causing pain. Among the amazing operations he performed are organ grafts, resectioning of
intestines, laparotomies (incisions into the loin), and thoracotomies (incisions into the
chest). All these difficult surgical procedures were said to have been rendered painless
by means of ma-yo, an anaesthetic made from cannabis resin and wine. The following
passage, taken from his biography, describes his use of cannabis in these operations:

But if the malady resided in the parts on which the needle [acupuncture], cautery, or
medicinal liquids were incapable of acting, for example, in the bones, in the stomach or
in the intestine, he administered a preparation of hemp [ma-yo] and, in the course
of several minutes, an insensibility developed as if one had been plunged into drunkenness
or deprived of life. Then, according to the case, he performed the opening, the incision
or the amputation and relieved the cause of the malady; then he apposed the tissues by
sutures and applied linaments. After a certain number of days the patient finds he has
recovered without having experienced the slightest pain during the operation.[19]

Although modern research has borne out marijuana's anaesthetic properties and has shown
that alcohol does indeed augment many of marijuana's actions, it is unlikely that Hua T'o
could have produced total insensibility to pain by the combination of these drugs unless
he administered so much of them that his patients lost consciousness.

While ma's stature as a medicinal agent began to decline around the fifth
century A.D., it still had its advocates long into the Middle Ages. In the tenth century
A.D., for example, some Chinese physicians claimed the drug was useful in the treatment of
"waste diseases and injuries", adding that it "clears blood and cools
temperature, it relieves fluxes; it undoes rheumatism; it discharges pus".[20]

An Early Psychedelic

Since the Chinese are the first people on record to use the marijuana plant for their
clothes, their writing materials, their confrontation with evil spirits, and in their
treatment of pain and disease, it is not surprising that they are also the first people on
record to experience marijuana's peculiar psychedelic effects.

As so many other testimonials to marijuana's multifaceted past have been found interred
deep within the bowels of the earth, so too was the proof of China's early flirtation with
marijuana's intoxicating chemistry found buried away in an ancient tomb. Rather than any
piece of cloth or handful of seeds, however, the evidence takes the form of an inscription
containing the symbol for marijuana, along with the adjective or connotation meaning
"negative".[21]

Unfortunately, we will never know what the gravediggers had in mind when they were
chiselling these words in granite. Was it just a mindless piece of graffiti? Even if it
were, it indicates that the Chinese were well aware of marijuana's unusual properties from
very ancient times, whether they approved of them or not.

Many did not approve. Due to the growing spirit of Taoism which began to permeate China
around 600 B.C., marijuana intoxication was viewed with special disdain. Taoism was
essentially a "back to nature" philosophy which sought ways of extending life.
Anything that contained yin, such as marijuana, was therefore regarded with
contempt since it enfeebled the body when eaten. Only substances filled with yang,
the invigorating principle in nature, were looked upon favorably.

Some Chinese denounced marijuana as the "liberator of sin".[22] A late
edition of the Pen Ts'au asserted that if too many marijuana seeds were eaten, they
would cause one to "see demons". But if taken over a long time, "one can
communicate with the spirits".[23]

However, by the first century A.D., Taoists became interested in magic and alchemy,[24]
and were recommending addition of cannabis seeds to their incense burners. The
hallucinations thus produced were highly valued as a means of achieving immortality.[25]

For some people, seeing spirits was the main reason for using cannabis. Meng Shen, a
seventh-century physician, adds, however, that if anyone wanted to see spirits in this
way, he would have to eat cannabis seeds for at least a hundred days.[26]

The Chinese have always been a highly reserved people, a nation rarely given to
excesses. Temperance and restraint are cherished virtues of their society. But these are
ideal traits, not always easy to live up to. And on more than one occasion, the
waywardness of segments of the Chinese population was denounced by the authorities.

In a book attributed to Shen-Nung's successor, the "yellow emperor", for
example, the author felt that alcoholism had truly gotten out of hand:

Nowadays people use wine as a beverage and they adopt recklessness as usual behaviour.
They enter the chamber of love in an intoxicated condition; their passions exhaust their
vital forces; their cravings dissipate their essence; they do not know how to find
contentment with themselves; they are not skilled in the control of their spirits. They
devote all their attention to the amusement of their minds, thus cutting themselves off
from the joys of long life. Their rising and retiring is without regularity. For these
reasons they reach only one half of the hundred years and then they degenerate.[27]

Alcohol, in fact, was a much more serious problem in China than marijuana, and opium
overshadowed both in the attention it later received. The Chinese experiment with
marijuana as a psychoactive agent was really more of a flirtation than an orgy. Those
among the Chinese who hailed it as the "giver of delight" never amounted to more
than a small segment of the population.

Japan

As in China, hemp fiber was highly regarded among the Japanese and figured prominently
in their everyday lives and legends.

Hemp (asa) was the primary material in Japanese clothes, bedding, mats and nets.
Clothes made of hemp fiber were especially worn during formal and religious ceremonies
because of hemp's traditional association with purity in Japan.[28] So fundamental was
hemp in Japanese life that it was often mentioned in legends explaining the origins of
everyday things, such as how the Japanese earthworm came to have white rings around its
neck.

According to Japanese legend, there were once two women who were both fine weavers of
hemp fiber. One woman made fine hemp fabric but was a very slow worker. Her neighbor was
just the opposite - she made coarse fabric but worked quickly. During market days, which
were held only periodically, it was customary for Japanese women to dress in their best
clothes, and as the day approached, the two women began to weave new dresses for the
occasion. The woman who worked quickly had her dress ready on time, but it was not very
fashionable. Her neighbor, who worked slowly, only managed to get the unbleached white
strands ready, and when market day came, she didn't have her dress ready. Since she had to
go to market, she persuaded her husband to carry her in a large jar on his back so that
only her neck, with the white undyed hemp strands around it would be visible. In this way,
everyone would think she was clothed instead of being naked inside the jar. On the way to
the market, the woman in the jar saw her neighbor and started making fun of her coarse
dress. The neighbor shot back that at least she was clothed. "Break the jar",
she told everyone who could hear, "and you will find a naked woman". The husband
became so mortified that he dropped the jar, which broke, revealing his naked wife,
clothed only in hemp strands around her neck. The woman was so ashamed as she stood naked
before everyone that she buried herself in the earth so that she would not be seen and she
turned into an earthworm. And that, according to the Japanese, is why the earthworm has
white rings around its neck.[29]

Hemp fiber also played a part in love and marital life in Japan. Another ancient
Japanese legend tells of a soldier who had been romancing a young girl and was about to
bid her farewell without giving her as much as his name, rank, or regiment. But the girl
was not about to be jilted by this handsome and charming paramour. Unbeknownst to her
mysterious lover, she fastened the end of a huge ball of hemp rope to his clothing as he
kissed her farewell. By following the thread, she eventually came to the temple of the god
Miva, and discovered that her suitor had been none other than the god himself.[30]

Besides its roles in such legends, hemp strands were an integral part of Japanese love
and marriage. Hemp strands were often hung on trees as charms to bind lovers[31] (as in
the legend), gifts of hemp were sent as wedding gifts by the man's family to the
prospective bride's family as a sign that they were accepting the girl,[32] and hemp
strands were prominently displayed during wedding ceremonies to symbolize the traditional
obedience of Japanese wives to their husbands.[33] The basis of the latter tradition was
the ease with which hemp could be dyed. Just as hemp could be dyed to any color, so too,
according to an ancient Japanese saying, must wives be willing to be "dyed in any
color their husbands may choose".[34]

Yet another use of hemp in Japan was in ceremonial purification rites for driving away
evil spirits. As already mentioned, in China evil spirits were banished from the bodies of
the sick by banging rods made from hemp against the head of the sickbed. In Japan, Shinto
priests performed a similar rite with a gohei, a short stick with undyed hemp
fibers (for purity) attached to one end. According to Shinto beliefs, evil and impurity
cannot exist alongside one another, and so, by waving the gohei (purity) above
someone's head the evil spirit inside him would be driven away.[35]

India: The First Marijuana-Oriented Culture

India has known little peace. Invaded from both land and sea, it has seen many
conquerors and has witnessed many empires come and go. Cyrus and Darius of Persia sent
their armies there. On the heels of the Persians came Alexander the Great. After Alexander
came more Greeks, then Parthians from Iran, Kushans from beyond the mountains in the
north, then Arabs, followed by Europeans. Unlike China, which remained remote and isolated
from the rest of the world for much of its history. India was known to all the great
nations of the ancient world.

Although the inhabitants of India are descended from a people known as the Aryans or
"noble ones", the Aryans were not the original natives of the Indian
subcontinent but instead invaded it from north of the Himalayas around 2000 B.C. Before
the Aryans, who were light-skinned and blue-eyed, a dark-skinned and dark-eyed people,
Australoid in origin, inhabited India. When the Aryans entered the country, they found a
complex civilization, including well-designed housing, adjoining toilet facilities, and
advanced drainage systems. The early inhabitants worked with gold and silver, and they
also knew how to fashion tools and ornaments from copper and iron.

When the Aryans first settled in India they were predominantly a nomadic people. During
the centuries that followed their invasion, they intermarried with the original
inhabitants, became farmers, and invented Sanskrit, one of man's earliest written
languages.

A collection of four holy books, called the Vedas, tells of daring exploits,
their chariot battles, conquests, subjugation of enemy armies, eventual settlement in the
land of the Indus, and even how their god Siva brought the marijuana plant down from the
Himalayas for their use and enjoyment.

According to one of their legends, Siva became enraged over some family squabble and
went off by himself in the fields. There, the cool shade of a tall marijuana plant brought
him a comforting refuge from the torrid rays of the blazing sun. Curious about this plant
that sheltered him from the heat of the day, he ate some of its leaves and felt so
refreshed that he adopted it as his favorite food, hence his title, the Lord of Bhang.

Bhang does not always refer to the plant itself but rather to a mild liquid refreshment
made with its leaves, and somewhat similar in potency to the marijuana used in America.

Among the ingredients and proportions of them that went into a formula
for bhang around the turn of the century were:

Cannabis

220 grains

Poppy seed

120 grains

Pepper

120 grains

Ginger

40 grains

Caraway seed

10 grains

Cloves

10 grains

Cardamon

10 grains

Cinnamon

10 grains

Cucumber seed

120 grains

Almonds

120 grains

Nutmeg

10 grains

Rosebuds

60 grains

Sugar

4 ounces

Milk

20 ounces

Boiled together[36]

Two other concoctions made from cannabis in India are ganja and charas. Ganja is
prepared from the flowers and upper leaves and is more potent than bhang. Charas, the most
potent of the three preparations, is made from flowers in the height of their bloom.
Charas contains a relatively large amount of resin and is roughly similar in strength to
hashish.

Bhang was and still is to India what alcohol is to the West. Many social and religious
gatherings in ancient times, as well as present, were simply incomplete unless bhang was
part of the occasion. It is said that those who spoke derisively of bhang are doomed to
suffer the torments of hell as long as the sun shines in the heavens.

Without bhang at special festivities like a wedding, evil spirits were believed to
hover over the bride and groom, waiting for an opportune moment to wreak havoc on the
newlyweds. Any father who failed to send or bring bhang to the ceremonies would be reviled
and cursed as if he had deliberately invoked the evil eye on his son and daughter.

Bhang was also a symbol of hospitality. A host would offer a cup of bhang to a guest as
casually as we would offer someone in our home a glass of beer. A host who failed to make
such a gesture was despised as being miserly and misanthropic.

War was another occasion in which bhang and more potent preparations like ganja were
often resorted to. Indian folksongs dating back to the twelfth century A.D. mention ganja
as a drink of warriors. Just as soldiers sometimes take a swig of whiskey before going
into battle in modern warfare, during the Middle Ages in India, warriors routinely drank a
small amount of bhang or ganja to assuage any feelings of panic, a custom that earned
bhang the cognomen of vijaya, "victorious" or
"unconquerable".[37]

A story is told of a guru named Gobind Singh, the founder of the Sikh religion, which
alludes to bhang's usage in battle. During a critical skirmish in which he was leading the
troops, Gobind Singh's soldiers were suddenly thrown into a panic at the sight of an
elephant bearing down on them with a sword in its trunk. As the beast slashed its way
through Gobind Singh's lines, his men appeared on the verge of breaking rank. Something
had to be done to prevent a disastrous rout. A volunteer was needed, a man willing to risk
certain death to accomplish the impossible task of slaying an elephant. There was no
shortage of men to step forward. Gobind Singh did not take time to pick and choose. To the
man closest to him he gave some bhang and a little opium, and then watched as the man went
out to kill the elephant. Fortified by the drug the loyal soldier rushed headlong into the
thick of battle and charged the sword-wielding elephant. Deftly evading the slashing blows
that could easily have severed his body in two, he managed to slip under the elephant and
with all his strength he plunged his own weapon into the unprotected belly of the beast.
When Gobind Singh's men saw the elephant lying dead in the field, they rallied and soon
overpowered the enemy. From that time forth, the Sikhs commemorated the anniversary of
that great battle by drinking bhang.

"To the Hindu the Hemp Plant Is Holy"

The earliest allusion to bhang's mind-altering influence is contained in the fourth
book of the Vedas, the Atharvaveda ("Science of Charms"). Written
some time between 2000 and 1400 B.C., the Atharvaveda (12:6.15) calls bhang one of
the "five kingdoms of herbs... which release us from anxiety." But it is not
until much later in India's history that bhang became a part of everyday life. By the
tenth century A.D., for example, it was just beginning to be extolled as a indracanna,
the "food of the gods". A fifteenth-century document refers to it as
"light-hearted", "joyful", and "rejoices", and claims that
among its virtues are "astringency", "heat",
"speech-giving", "inspiration of mental powers",
"excitability", and the capacity to "remove wind and phlegm".[38]

By the sixteenth century A.D., it found its way into India's popular literature. The Dhurtasamagama,
or "Rogue's Congress", a light farce written to amuse audiences, has two beggars
come before an unscrupulous judge asking for a decision on a quarrel concerning a maiden
at the bazaar. Before he will render his decision, however, the judge demands payment for
his arbitration, In response to this demand, one of the beggars offers some bhang. The
judge readily accepts and, tasting it, declares that "it produces a healthy appetite,
sharpens the wits, and acts as an aphrodisiac".[39]

In the Rajvallabha, a seventeenth-century text dealing with drugs used in India,
bhang is described as follows:

India's food is acid, produces infatuation, and destroys leprosy. It creates vital
energy, increases mental powers and internal heat, corrects irregularities of the
phlegmatic humor, and is an elixir vitae. It was originally produced like nectar
from the ocean by churning it with Mount Mandara. Inasmuch as it is believed to give
victory in the three worlds and to bring delight to the king of the gods (Siva), it was
called vijaya (victorious). This desire-filling drug was believed to have been
obtained by men on earth for the welfare of all people. To those who use it regularly, it
begets joy and diminishes anxiety.[40]

Yet it was not as a medicinal aid or as a social lubricant that bhang was preeminent
among the people of India. Rather, it was and still is because of its association with the
religious life of the country that bhang is so extolled and glorified. The stupefaction
produced by the plant's resin is greatly valued by the fakirs and ascetics, the holy men
of India, because they believe that communication with their deities is greatly
facilitated during intoxication with bhang. (According to one legend, the Buddha subsisted
on a daily ration of one cannabis seed, and nothing else, during his six years of
asceticism.[41]) Taken in early morning, the drug is believed to cleanse the body of sin.
Like the communion of Christianity, the devotee who partakes of bhang partakes of the god
Siva.

Cannabis also held a preeminent place in the Tantric religion which evolved in Tibet in
the seventh century A.D. out of an amalgam of Buddhism and local religion.[42] The priests
of this religion were wizards known as lamas ("superiors"). The high priest was
called the Dalai Lama ("mighty superior").

Tantrism, a word that means "that which is woven together", was a religion
based on fear of demons. To combat the demonic threat to the world, the people sought
protection in the spells, incantations, formulas (mantras), and exorcisms of their lamas,
and in plants such as cannabis which were set afire to overcome evil forces.

Cannabis was also an important part of the Tantric religious yoga sex acts consecrated
to the goddess Kali. During the ritual, about an hour and a half prior to intercourse the
devotee placed a bowl of bhang before him and uttered the mantra: "Om hrim, O
ambrosia-formed goddess [Kali] who has arisen from ambrosia, who showers ambrosia, bring
me ambrosia again and again, bestow occult power [siddhi] and bring my chosen deity
to my power."[43] Then, after uttering several other mantras, he drank the potion.
The delay between drinking the bhang and the sex act was to allow the drug time to act so
that it would heighten the senses and thereby increase the feeling of oneness with the
goddess.[44]

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, which had been
summoned in the 1890s to investigate the use of cannabis in India, concluded that the
plant was so much an integral part of the culture and religion of that country that to
curtail its usage would certainly lead to unhappiness, resentment, and suffering. Their
conclusions:

To the Hindu the hemp plant is holy. A guardian lives in the bhang leaf... To see in a
dream the leaves, plant, or water of bhang is lucky... No good thing can come to the man
who treads underfoot the holy bhang leaf. A longing for bhang foretells happiness.

...Besides as a cure for fever, bhang has many medicinal virtues... It cures dysentry
and sunstroke, clears phlegm, quickens digestion, sharpens appetite, makes the tongue of
the lisper plain, freshens the intellect, and gives alertness to the body and gaiety to
the mind. Such are the useful and needful ends for which in his goodness the Almighty made
bhang... It is inevitable that temperaments should be found to whom the quickening spirit
of bhang is the spirit of freedom and knowledge. In the ecstasy of bhang the spark of the
Eternal in man turns into light the murkiness of matter... Bhang is the Joygiver, the
Skyflier, the Heavenly-guide, the Poor Man's Heaven, the Soother of Grief... No god or man
is as good as the religious drinker of bhang... The supporting power of bhang has brought
many has brought many a Hindu family safe through the miseries of famine. To forbid or
even seriously to restrict the use of so holy and gracious an herb as the hemp would cause
widespread suffering and annoyance and to large bands of worshipped ascetics, deep-seated
anger. It would rob the people of a solace in discomfort, of a cure in sickness, of a
guardian whose gracious protection saves them from the attacks of evil influences... So
grand a result, so tiny a sin![45]

Persia

India was not the only country to be invaded by the Aryans. By 1500 B.C., Persia, Asia
Minor, and Greece had been overrun and the Aryans were establishing permanent settlements
as far west as France and Germany. Although the people who settled in these countries
eventually developed into different nationalities, with different customs and traditions,
their common Aryan ancestry can still be traced in their languages which collectively are
called Indo-European. For example, the linguistic root an, which is found in
various cannabis-related words, can be found in French in the word chanvre
and in the German hanf. Our own word cannabis is taken directly from the Greek,
which in turn is taken from canna, an early Sanskrit term.

When the Aryans first settled in Persia (modern-day Iran, "the land of the
Aryans"), they separated into two kingdoms - Medea and Parsa (Persia). Four centuries
later, Cyrus the Great, the ruler of Parsa, unified the country, and with the combined
forces of the Medes and Parsa behind him, he led his armies eastward and westward. By 546
B.C., the Persian or Achaemenid Empire as it was called (from Achaemenes, Cyrus'
ancestor), reached from Palestine to India. Twenty years later, the Persians defeated
Egypt and extended their control over that great kingdom as well.

It was not until 331 B.C. that the Persian empire finally collapsed; its nemesis - the
Greeks and their brilliant leader - Alexander the Great.

The Aryans who settled in Persia came from the same area in central Russia as their
cousins who invaded India, so it is hardly surprising that the Persian word bhanga
is almost identical to the Indian term bhang.

The Zend-Avesta is the Persian counterpart to the Vedas. However, unlike
the Vedas, many of the books that were once a part of the Zend-Avesta have
disappeared. The book itself was said to have been written by the Persian prophet
Zoroaster, around the seventh century B.C., and reputedly was transcribed on no fewer than
1200 cowhides containing approximately two million verses!

Professor Mirceau Eliade, perhaps the world's foremost authority on the history of
religions, has suggested that Zoroaster himself may have been a user of bhanga and may
have relied on its intoxication to bridge the metaphysical gap between heaven and
earth.[46] One of the few surviving books of the Zend-Avesta, called the Vendidad,
"The Law Against Demons", in fact calls bhanga Zoroaster's "good
narcotic",[47] and tells of two mortals who were transported in soul to the heavens
where, upon drinking from a cup of bhanga, they had the highest mysteries revealed to
them.

The Vendidad also contains a cryptic reference to bhanga's being used to induce
abortions, but this seems not to have been an accepted usage of the drug in ancient Persia
since the abortionist is called an old hag, not a doctor.[48]

The Cult of the Dead

Around the seventh century B.C., yet another swarm of Aryan warriors came out of
central Siberia looking for new lands upon which to graze their animals. This time they
claimed a vast territory stretching from northern Greece and beyond the Black Sea to the
Altai Mountains in central Siberia as their new homeland.

Known as the Scythians, these conquerors, like their Aryan ancestors before them, were
skilled in warfare and renowned for their horsemanship. And also like their ancestors who
settled in India and Persia, the Scythians were no strangers to the intoxicating effects
of marijuana. According to Herodotus, a Greek historian who lived in the fifth century
B.C., marijuana was an integral part of the Scythian cult of the dead wherin homage was
paid to the memory of their departed leaders.

Herodotus' passion for detail and devotion to fact has often provided scholars with
their only contact with long-forgotten people and their customs. Nowhere was this more
true than in the case of the Scythians. Were it not for Herodotus' description of the
funerary customs of the Scythians, for example, one of the best known instances of the use
of marijuana in the ancient world would never have been recorded.

The funereal practice alluded to by Herodotus took place among the Scythians living
northeast of Macedonia on the first anniversary of the death of one of their chiefs. The
ceremony that commemorated that passing was a rather grisly affair, not one for the faint
of heart, but of course the Scythians could hardly have been accused of being
faint-hearted. First, it called for the death of fifty of the chief's former bodyguards,
along with their horses. The bodies of these men were then opened, their intestines and
inner organs were removed, various herbs were placed in the open cavities, and the bodies
were then stitched back together. Meanwhile, their horses, each fully bridled, were killed
and impaled on stakes arranged in a circle around the chief's tomb. The dead bodies of the
chief's erstwhile protectors were then lifted onto the horses and were left to rot as they
stood their last watch over the tomb of their former leader.

Following this sobering rite, all those who had assisted in the burial cleansed
themselves in a unique purification ritual. First, they washed their bodies thoroughly
with cleansing oil. Then they erected small tents, into which they placed metal censors
containing red-hot stones. Next, the men crawled into the tents and dumped marijuana seeds
onto the hot stones. The seeds soon began to smolder and throw off vapors, which in the
words of Herodotus, caused the Scythians to "howl with joy".[49] Seemingly, the
purification was the Scythian counterpart to the hard-drinking frazzled Irish wake, with
marijuana instead of alcohol as the ceremonial intoxicant.

Even though Herodotus' accuracy in recording history has often been borne out by other
historical documents, scholars found this bizarre burial custom including the
marijuana-induced intoxication too incredible to be true.

But in 1929 a Russian archaeologist, Professor S.I. Rudenko, made a fantastic discovery
in the Pazyryk Valley of central Siberia. Digging into some ancient ruins near the Altai
Mountains on the border between Siberia and Outer Mongolia, Rudenko found a trench about
160 feet square and about 20 feet deep. On the perimeter of the trench were the skeletons
of a number of horses. Inside the trench was the embalmed body of a man and a bronze
cauldron filled with burnt marijuana seeds![50] Clearing the site further, Rudenko also
found some shirts woven from hemp fiber and some metal censors designed for inhaling
marijuana smoke which did not appear to be connected with any religious rite. To Rudenko,
the evidence suggested that inhalation of smoldering marijuana seeds occurred not only in
a religious context, but also as an everyday activity, one in which Scythian women
participated alongside the men.

Although he does not identify them, Herodotus had also heard of another tribe of nomads
who used marijuana for recreational purposes. Speaking of these people, Herodutus states
that when they "have parties and sit around a fire, they throw some of it into the
flames. As it burns, it smokes like incense, and the smell of it makes them drunk, just as
wine does. As more fruit is thrown on, they get more and more intoxicated until finally
they jump up and start dancing and singing."[51]

The Scythians eventually disappeared as a distinct national entity, but their
descendants spread through Eastern Europe. While remembrances of their ancestors were
lost, memories of ancestral customs were still retained, although, of course, these were
modified down through the centuries. It is in this regard that anthropologist Sula Benet's
comment that "hemp never lost its connection with the cult of the dead"[52]
takes on added significance since she has traced the influence of the Scythians and their
hemp funerary customs down to the modern era in Eastern Europe and Russia.

On Christmas Eve, for instance, Benet notes that the people of Poland and Lithuania
serve semieniatka, a soup made from hemp seeds. The Poles and Lithuanians believe
that on the night before Christmas the spirits of the dead visit their families and the
soup is for the souls of the dead. A similar ritual takes place in Latvia and in the
Ukraine on Three Kings Day. Yet another custom carried out in deference to the dead in
Western Europe was the throwing of hemp seeds onto a blazing fire during harvest time as
an offering to the dead - a custom that originated with the Scythians and has seemingly
been passed on from generation to generation for over 2500 years.

Babylonia, Palestine, and Egypt

The farthest west marijuana fibers have ever been found in the ancient world is Turkey.
Sifting through artefacts dating back to the time of the Phrygians, a tribe of Aryans who
invaded that country around 1000 B.C., archaeologists unearthed pieces of fabric
containing hemp fibers in the debris around Gordion, an ancient city located near
present-day Ankara.[53]

Although the Scythians had contacts with the people of Babylonia, who lived to the west
of the Phrygians, no hemp fiber or definite mention of hemp (Cannabis sativa) to
the west of Turkey can be found until the time of the Greeks.[54] There are some vague
references, however, which may or may not be cannabis. In a letter written around 680 B.C.
by an unknown woman to the mother of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon, for example, mention is
made of a substance called qu-nu-bu[55] which could be cannabis.

There is also very little evidence that the Egyptians ever cultivated the plant during
the time of the Pharaohs. Papyrus documents from ancient Egypt list the names of hundreds
of drugs and their plant sources, but there is no unequivocal mention of marijuana in any
of its forms.[56] While some scholars have contended that the drug smsm t,
mentioned in the Berlin and Ebers papyri, is cannabis,[57] this opinion is conjecture. No
mummy has ever been discovered wrapped in fabric made from cannabis. In the ruins of El
Amarna, the city of Akhenaton (the Pharaoh who tried to introduce monotheism to ancient
Egypt), archaeologists found a "three ply hemp cord" in the hole of a stone and
a large mat bound with "hemp cords",[58] but unfortunately they did not specify
the type of hemp. Many different bast fibers were called hemp and no one can be certain
that the fibers at El Amarna are cannabis, especially since Deccan hemp (Hibiscus
cannabinus) grows in Egypt.[59]

The earliest unmistakable reference to cannabis in Egypt does not occur until the third
century A.D., when the Roman emperor Aurelian imposed a tax on Egyptian cannabis.[60] Even
then, however, there was very little of the fiber in Egypt.

There is no evidence that the ancient Israelites ever knew of the plant, although
several attempts have been made to prove that they did. Because the Arabs sometimes
referred to hashish as grass, some writers have argued that the "grass" eaten by
Nebuchadnezzar was actually hashish. Another contention is that the phantasmagoria of
composite creatures and brilliant colors seen by Ezekiel are unintelligible except from
the standpoint of hashish intoxication.

In the most recent attempt to infuse marijuana with biblical antiquity, the Old
Testament has been tickled, teased, and twisted into surrendering secret references to
marijuana that it never contained. From the fact that the Scythians had made contact with
the people of Palestine during the seventh century B.C., it has been suggested that
knowledge and usage of the plant was passed on to the Israelites through some kind of
cultural exchange. Linguistic arguments are then advanced to prove that the Israelites
were users of marijuana.

For example, because the Hebrew adjective bosm (Aramaic busma), meaning
"aromatic" or "sweet-smelling", is found in connection with the word qeneh
(which can also be written as kaneh or kaneb) and because of the similarity
between kaneh and bosm, and the Scythian word kannabis, it is argued
that they are one and the same.[61]

However the word kaneh or qeneh is a very vague term[62] that has
disconcerted more than a few biblical scholars. A reference to qeneh in Isaiah
43:24 refers not to a "sweet-smelling" but a "sweet-tasting" plant.
Few people would ever say that marijuana leaves taste sweet. Because of this reference to
a sweet-tasting plant, some biblical scholars and botanists believe that qeneh is
probably sugarcane.

Although the Bible states that qeneh came from a "far country"
(Jeremiah 6:20), sugar grew in India, which is in keeping with the passage from Jeremiah.
The reference to qeneh as a spice in Exodus 30:23 also suggests sugar rather than
cannabis.[63]

The earliest reference to cannabis among the Jews actually does not occur until the
early Middle Ages when the first unmistakable mention of it is found in the Talmud.

The Jews of Talmudic times were particularly concerned about certain precepts which
prohibited the mingling of heterogeneous substances, and on at least one occasion the
sages argued over whether hemp seeds could be sown in a vineyard. The majority opinion was
that such intermingling was permissible, indicating that they recognized a certain
similarity between cannabis and the grape. This similarity could not have been due to the
appearance of the two plants and must have centered around the intoxication produced by
each.

A similar question likewise arose concerning the purification of wicker mats which were
placed over grapes during wine pressing to keep them from scattering. The decision
rendered by the rabbis was that if the baskets were made of hemp they could be used,
provided they were thoroughly cleaned.[64] However, if they were made of some other
material, the rabbis ruled that they could not be employed in wine pressing until twelve
months had elapsed since the time they were last used.

The Birthplace of Democracy

Greece: land of myth and beauty, home to some of the greatest minds the world has ever
known - Socrates, Plato, Aristotle - birthplace of democracy; Greece was all of these and
more. It gave the world its first great art, literature, theater, political institutions,
sporting events, scientific and medical discoveries - the list is endless.

Yet despite these monumental achievements, Greece was a turbulent country and war was
no stranger to its inhabitants. When they were not fighting among themselves, the Greeks
faced the threat of invasion from empires like that of Darius and Xerxes. When Alexander
the Great came to power, the Greeks in turn became world conquerors.

Alexander's was not the first campaign outside the Greek mainland. The Trojan war (ca.
1200 B.C.) saw Greek armies encamped on the shores of the Dardanelles in Asia Minor almost
ten centuries before Alexander.

According to the Greek poet Homer (ca. 850 B.C.), who described the events of that war
in the Iliad, the war was fought over a woman, the most beautiful mortal in the
world - Helen, daughter of the great god Zeus and his human paramour. The Iliad
tells of the great battles that took place before the walls of Troy, and the great heroes
who fought them. It ends, however, not with the fall of Troy, but with the death of
Hector, the Trojan prince, at the hands of the great Achilles. The actual conquest of Troy
and the homeward journey of the Greeks is chronicled in Homer's other great epic, the Odyssey.
Although it is primarily the story of the events that befell the great hero Odysseus as he
tries to return to his island-home of Ithica, the story contains a brief scene in which
some readers believe they have come across one of the earliest references to cannabis in
Greek literature.

The Mysterious Nepenthe

On their way back from Troy, Helen, who had been reunited with her husband, Menelaus,
stopped off in Egypt for a brief layover. While Menelaus took on new supplies, his wife
went about exploring what was even in those times an ancient civilization. During this
brief visit to the land of the Pharaohs, Helen paid a visit to a woman by the name of
Polydamna. Polydamna was a dealer in drugs.

Many years later, during a magnificent party thrown by Menelaus in his palace in
Sparta, the conversation naturally turned to the recent war in Troy. Someone remarked how
sad it was that Odysseus, who had been a great friend of Menelaus' as well as many of the
guests at the party, had not been heard of since his departure from Troy. The mention of
Odysseus cast a shadow over the festivities and everyone started to become morose. The
more the guests spoke of the lost hero, the sadder they became. The party was turning into
a wake.

As spirits plummeted, Helen herself started feeling remorseful, not because of any
grief she felt over the missing Odysseus, but because all this sadness and melancholy were
spoiling her party. If she did not do something quickly, the party would die, the guests
would go home, and, sooner than she cared for, she would have to return to the boring life
of being a woman in an age when women were seen, made love to, but rarely heard or spoken
to.

The situation called for emergency measures and Helen met the situation head on.
Reaching into her bag of tricks, she came up with a drug given her by Polydamna. Secretly,
she placed the compound into the wine of her guests. The drug, which Homer only identifies
as nepenthe ("against sorrow"), was a compound with the power to suppress
despair. Whoever drank this mixture, Homer wrote, would be incapable of sadness, even if
his mother and father lay dead, or his son were slain before his very eyes.[65]

The drug was an instant success. The guests forgot their sorrow and regained their
spirits. Although the conversation still revolved around Odysseus, it no longer evoked any
grief. Helen even told the guests how she and Odysseus had once spent some compromising
moments together. All the while her husband listened to the news that he had been
cuckolded by his best friend, he remained calm and indifferent, so great was the power of
Polydamna's drug.

What was this soporific, this stupefying drug that restrained even the deepest sense of
grief and sorrow? No one really knows. There is no reason for Homer not to have identified
it if he had some specific drug in mind.

To add even more mystery to this enigma, the Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily, who
visited Egypt in the first century B.C., also refers to a "nepenthic" drug from
that country which brought forgetfulness of all sorrows.[66] Like Homer, he too never
gives this drug a name.

Conjecture always lurks in the shadow of uncertainty, and throughout the ages many have
tried to identify Homer's elusive nepenthe. One of the more interesting guesses is that
the drug was cannabis.

For example, when poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge invited a friend to come for a visit, he
coaxed him to bring along some drugs "and I will give a fair trial to opium, henbane,
and nepenthe. By the bye," he added, "I have always considered Homer's account
of nepenthe as a banging lie."[67] At the time he wrote this letter in 1803,
Coleridge was one of the few Europeans who were acquainted with the Indian beverage bhang.
His pun indicates that, as far as he is concerned, nepenthe and bhang were one and the
same.

E.W. Lane, editor of The Thousand and One Nights, was similarly convinced:
"'Benj', the plural of which in Coptic is 'nibendji', is without doubt the same plant
as the 'nepenth', which has so much perplexed the commentators of Homer. Helen evidently
brought the nepenthe from Egypt, and benj is there still reported to possess all the
wonderful qualities which Homer attributes to it."[68]

Not everyone agreed. Thomas De Quincey, author of Confessions of an Opium Eater,
rejected cannabis as the sorrow-killing agent mentioned by Homer preferring his own
favorite, opium, which he regarded as a "panacea, a pharmakon nepenthes" for all
woes.[69]

While no one will ever know what drug Homer had in mind, it is certain that it was not
cannabis since cannabis was not known in Egypt until more than a thousand years after
Homer wrote his stirring epics. On the other hand, opium is mentioned in ancient Egyptian
writings, and of all the possibilities that have been suggested it still remains the most
likely.

While the ancient Greeks remained ignorant of the intoxicating properties of the
cannabis plant, they were not slow to appreciate the durability and strength of its fiber.
As early as the sixth century B.C., Greek merchants whose Milesian colonies served as a
middle station between mainland Greece and the eastern coast of Asia Minor, had been
carrying on a lucrative business transporting cannabis fiber to the ports along the
Aegean.[70]

The Thracians, a Greek-speaking people living in the Balkans who were probably more
closely related to the Scythians than to the Greeks, were especially adept at working
hemp. Writing around 450 B.C., Herodotus says of their clothes that they "were so
like linen that none but a very experienced could tell whether they were of hemp or flax;
one who had never seen hemp would certainly suppose them to be linen.[71]

Herodotus does not say whether the Thracians used any of the other parts of the plant,
but Plutarch (46-127 B.C.), writing some 400 years later, mentions that after their meals,
it was not uncommon for the Thracians to throw the tops of a plant which looked like
oregano into the fire. Inhaling the fumes of this plant, the people became drunk and then
so tired they finally fell asleep.[72]

However, Thrace was far from the center of Greek culture and most Greeks remained
ignorant of cannabis's intoxicating properties. Theophrastus, the famous Greek botanist
(372-287 B.C.), does not list cannabis among the native plants of Greece and nowhere is
there any reference to it in the Greek myths, although various drugs such as datura
(Jimson weed), mandragora (mandrake), and hyoscyanus (henbane) are described
as consciousness-modifying drugs in use at ancient Greek shrines and oracles.[73]

In the third century B.C., Hiero II (270-15 B.C.), ruler of the Greek city-state of
Syracuse, did not send his envoys to the Black Sea city of Colchis which supplied many
Greek cities with hemp, but to the far-off Rhone Valley in France.[74] So sophisticated
about the various characteristics of hemp fiber was he that only the most superior
varieties were to be used to make ropes for his proposed armada. (This incident is the
earliest reference to cannabis in Western Europe known to historians.)

Since the Greeks had become so knowledgeable about the kinds of fibers produced by
cannabis growing in different geographical regions, they would no doubt also have
mentioned the intoxicating properties of the plant had these been known. Although there
are references to cannabis both as a delicacy and a remedy for backache in Greek
literature dating back tot he fourth century B.C.,[75] no notice of the plant as an
intoxicant occurs until the nineteenth century.[76]

Rome

The Roman Empire was the last and greatest colossus of the ancient world. At the summit
of its glory, it extended from England in the west to Russia in the east. No fewer than
100 million people lived within its frontiers.

It was an empire primarily governed by a small elite aristocracy in Rome whose commands
were dutifully administered by a well-oiled bureaucracy which could call upon a highly
trained and devoted army whenever force was necessary.

Most of the everyday chores in the city were performed by slaves. About one-half
million lived in Rome. A middle-class businessman might own about 10; the emperor owned
about 25,000.

Wealthy Romans spent most of their time eating, bathing, gambling, and whoring. But
some also had a taste for the arts. Since the Romans did not excel very greatly in the
latter, prominent men would bring Greek writers, painters, philosophers, and scientists to
Rome to work for them and to converse with whenever the feeling moved them. Of this
Graecophilia, the Roman poet Horace observed: "Captive Greece has taken captive her
rude conqueror."

Among the eminent Greek scientists who found employment among the Romans was Pedacius
Dioscorides. Born in Asia Minor in the early part of the first century A.D., he became a
physician and spent much of his early career in the Roman army tending the needs of the
soldiers as they travelled the world conquering new lands to add to the empire. During
these campaigns, Dioscorides collected and studied the various plants he encountered in
different parts of the world and eventually he put what he had learned into a herbal.

The first copy of this book was published in A.D. 70. Dioscorides called it a materia
medica and it became to the Western world what the Pen Ts'ao was to the
Chinese. It identified each of the plants listed according to its native habitat and the
names by which it was known. Peculiar features were then noted, and finally, symptoms and
conditions for which the plant had proven beneficial were described.

The book became an instant success and was subsequently translated into nearly all of
the languages of the ancient and medieval world. For the next fifteen centuries it
remained an important reference for physicians, and no medical library was considered
complete unless it housed at least one copy of this herbal.

Among the more than 600 entries appearing in the book was cannabis. This plant,
Dioscorides wrote, was not only very useful for manufacturing strong ropes, but the juice
of its seeds was also very beneficial in treating earaches and in diminishing sexual
desires.[77]

Although this is all Dioscorides had to say on the subject, it was the first time
cannabis had been described as a medical remedy in a Western medical text. And since
Dioscorides' herbal continued to be one of the most important books in medicine for the
next 1500 years, cannabis became a common household remedy for treating earaches
throughout Europe during the Middle Ages.

Another prominent physician whose work was to influence the course of medical science
for the next fifteen centuries was Claudius Galen (A.D. 130-200). Born in Pergamum, a
country located in modern-day Turkey, Galen was the son of a wealthy and ambitious
landowner who dreamed one night that his son would become the most famous physician in the
world. The lavish praise and attention bestowed upon him by his father made Galen an
insufferable egotist. "Whoever seeks fame need only become familiar with all that I
have achieved," he once told his pupils.[78]

Such a statement may seem conceited, but it was true. Galen was to become the most
famous physician of the ancient and Middle Ages, and a thorough study of his writings was
mandatory for any doctor.

To prepare his son for the future, Galen was recognized as the leading authority on
anatomy and physiology. He was a prolific writer, his medical pronouncements were never
challenged, and his writings became the standard references of the medical profession.
These writings, along with Dioscorides' herbal, were the most influential books in Western
medicine for centuries.

Like Dioscorides, Galen had little to say about cannabis, but he does state that the
Romans, at least those with money, used to top off their banquets with a marijuana-seed
dessert, a confectionery treat which left guests with a warm and pleasurable sensation. To
be avoided, however, was an overindulgence in this confection, for among the adverse
after-effects of too many seeds were dehydration and impotence. Other properties Galen
mentions are antiflatulence and analgesia. "If consumed in large amounts," he
says, it "affects the head by sending to it a warm and toxic vapor."[79]

Following Galen, Oribasius, court physician to the emperor Julian (fourth century
A.D.), wrote that cannabis seeds "harms the head", had antiflatulent effects,
produced a "warm feeling", and caused weight-reduction.[80]

Most Romans, however, had little familiarity with cannabis seed. Very little hemp was
raised in Italy.[81] If anything, the Romans were interested in the plant because of its
fiber, for with good strong fiber Rome could outfit its expanding navy and keep it at sea
longer.

Most of Rome's hemp came from Babylonia.[82] The city of Sura was particularly renowned
for its hempen ropes.[83] Other cities such as Colchis, Cyzicus, Alabanda, Mylasa, and
Ephesus, which had been leading producers during the Greek empire, continued to produce
and export hemp as their chief product under the Romans.

The only other Roman author to give cannabis more than just a passing reference was the
indefatigable encyclopedist of the ancient world, Caius Plinius Secundus (A.D. 23-79),
otherwise known as Pliny the Elder. One of the best known members of the Roman
establishment, Pliny preferred reading and writing to the more usual pastimes of the
aristocracy. At the time of his death in A.D. 79, he left behind 160 manuscripts, many of
which unfortunately have long since disappeared.

His most famous work, copies of which have been preserved down through the ages, was
called the Natural History. These volumes are a collection of fact and fantasy
which Pliny copied from other books or which he transcribed from conversations with
various people throughout the empire. Most of the factual material was taken from
Aristotle's books. The fantasy included anything and everything. Nothing was too
incredible to be recorded. Pliny records that there are some men without mouths who inhale
the fragrance of flowers instead of eating food, that horses will commit suicide if they
discover that they have engaged in an incestual relationship with a close relative, etc.
Exotic animals such as the unicorn and the winged horses are also given their due.

But like his contemporaries, Pliny had very little to record about cannabis. The fibers
of the plant, he noted, made superb rope. The juice of the cannabis seed was also useful
for extracting "worms from the ears, or any insect which may have entered them."
While the seeds could also render men impotent, they were beneficial in alleviating gout
and similar maladies.[84]

Wherever the people of the ancient world roamed, they carried with them the seeds of
the precious cannabis plant. From China in the east to the Rhone Valley in the west, the
seeds were spread. Cold weather, hot weather, wet or dry, fertile soil or barren, the
seeds were not to be denied.

Except in India and China, most of the ancient world was completely ignorant of the
intoxicating properties of the plant. Ancient European legends and herbals had little to
say regarding its peculiar psychological effects.

If Europeans saw any magic in cannabis, it was its fibers, not its intoxicating power,
that aroused their awe and admiration. Farther to the south, however, cannabis eventually
inspired sentiments of a different kind in a people who challenged Europe for world
domination.